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And if you think of the Serengheti tribes, the dry season gets SO oppressively dry that plants die out in droves. So they may have optimal growing temps all year long (though even this is debatable), but certainly not optimal growing conditions.

"The cling and a clang is the metal in my head when I walk. I hear a sort of, this tinging noise - cling clang. The cling clang. So many things happen while walking. The metal in my head clangs and clings as I walk - freaks my balance out. So the natural thought is just clogged up. Totally clogged up. So we need to unplug these dams, and make the the natural flow... It sort of freaks me out. We need to unplug the dams. You cannot stop the natural flow of thought with a cling and a clang..."

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Given the fact we don't know what caveman really ate, we can continue to speculate. Let me just say one thing, I am so happy I don't have to eat like a caveman. I am sure they would of loved a nice hot pizza!

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Given the fact we don't know what caveman really ate, we can continue to speculate. Let me just say one thing, I am so happy I don't have to eat like a caveman. I am sure they would of loved a nice hot pizza!

"would have"

Well I guess someone is home and bored on Christmas break! Hello again!

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By the way, did you know that if a woman comments at the end of her lifting that now it's time to go home and eat the hell out of some steak, every man in the gym will look at her male partner with awe and envy? True story.

I think this is why my boyfriend stays with me. Well, maybe not the steak. He's kind of horrified by that. But because of the hiking and backpacking I do. There is a portion of men who actually do like adventurous, steak-eating, weight lifting, dirt-under-the-fingernails women.

Female, 5'3", 50, Max squat: 202.5lbs. Max deadlift: 225 x 3.

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Paleolithic men would have learnt to avoid certain foods through word of mouth too, like poisonous plants and dangerous animals. There are plenty of berries which look appetising but are poisonous to humans. In that sense they would have chosen to restrict their diets too. The only difference is we are faced with having to avoid foods we have already eaten in the belief that they were healthy and have developed cravings for.

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for much of the world, there are growing seasons. just using my area as an example, and pretending that grocery stores with year round shipped in fruit don't exist, there are summer crops and there are fall/winter crops

it takes weeks for something to become ripe enough to eat and back then there was no preservation. it was get it before the insects and other animals got it (or some sort of blight), and then eat it before it rotted on the ground or limb/vine and went to seed

it's a very small window, and not realistic to state that all ancient man had to do was get up from his nap and pick something off the tree to eat any time he wanted, year round. even if he'd been roaming nearer the equator, it still wouldn't have been THAT easy to eat as much as he wanted, whenever he wanted

I am not arguing if caveman was eating what he wanted whenever he wanted. I don't know what he would or wouldn't do. But in some parts of the world he did have fruits available all year round but maybe his preference was to catch a duiker for example instead of climbing a tree. You have a sense of fallacy in terms of availability of edible fruiting plants in equatorial parts of the world. Not all the fruit varieties ripe at the same time. Basically, fruits are available whole year round. We are not talking about commercial crops. There are many climatic variances where your principle does not fit as the climate can vary even within short distances. There is a difference between Gabon for example and the northern part of the Republic of Congo as well as the Central African Republic. The climate is not identical. There are microclimates. It is an oversimplification to just state that there is rainy/dry season.
All I am trying to say is that you are excluding the fact that the fruits are available all year round in some parts of the world. Whether the availability is sustainable for a large population, it's questionable and I am not arguing with that.
By the way did you know that fruit is also part of the Inuit diet in different forms (dry, frozen and fresh)? It is no way significant but it is present. I am not arguing sustainability but to state that all they eat is meat is false. Which is another fallacy propagated on this site.

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If you consider the native Amizon tribes, they have rainy vs. dry seasons. When the Amazon river floods you can bet they're eating more seafood and less vegetable matter due to not being able to forage as well.

When the river recedes again, they can get back to foraging for nuts, berries, and vegetables. So even in tropical climates there likely was some seasonable availability of certain foods.

That said, I think even the tropical tribes are a poor example of "certain people had foods available all year." In my opinion, this is unlikely at best.

Amazon is such a broad area, which part of Amazon and which Amazon tribes are you referring to? Not all parts of Amazon have dry and rainy seasons.

"The rain belt reaches roughly as far north as the Tropic of Cancer and as far south as the Tropic of Capricorn. Near these latitudes, there is one wet season and one dry season annually. On the equator, there are two wet and two dry seasons as the rain belt passes over twice a year, once moving north and once moving south. Between the tropics and the equator, locations may experience a short wet and a long wet season."

So between the tropics, the wet vs. dry phenomenon is pretty universal. It might be slightly different lengths for different areas, but they ALL have it.

"The cling and a clang is the metal in my head when I walk. I hear a sort of, this tinging noise - cling clang. The cling clang. So many things happen while walking. The metal in my head clangs and clings as I walk - freaks my balance out. So the natural thought is just clogged up. Totally clogged up. So we need to unplug these dams, and make the the natural flow... It sort of freaks me out. We need to unplug the dams. You cannot stop the natural flow of thought with a cling and a clang..."

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Very interesting topic, thank you, Zach, for posting it! Read every page.
I believe that basically we do think like Grok did. Environment has changed, thats all. I would not agree that choice of food is stressful. We go to supermarkets with wast choice of good food, not so good food, total shit, non-food items, etc. As we walk along the shelves, choose what we like and there is so much more to choose from - the gatherer in us is perfectly happy there. The only trick is to chose right things in the shop. Then at home when you open the fridge and choose what to eat you can choose whatever you like, its all ok, no stress.
Is it difficult to chose meat, vegs or fruit over bagel, brownie, watermelon? Not for me. The only tricky thing is the brownie. I so much love chocolate! But not the wheat in it. Bagel - no problem. I still like the smell of fresh bread but I have no desire even to take it in my hand, let alone put in my mouth. Not any more. There were times when I would be afraid to lose a bagel out of sight, had to eat and eat, non-stop. Or at least know where my stash of bread was and how fast it was accessible. Well and the watermelon then. But that is fruit, fruit is legitimate to eat. Even with much fruit available in my fridge/pantry I do not overindulge. Sometimes I want meat, sometimes - eggs, sometimes - vegetable soup, sometimes fruit. Eating only the right foods without thinking and counting calories, carbs, fats or whatever has led me to eating right amounts of them if viewed on long-term. I check myself on Fitday once in a while to keep on track. I have chocolate stored in my kitchen, I have lots of tasty fruit, but I can leave them there, I am full and happy because by choice I had totally vegetarian pumpkin soup. The other day I had lots of pork. And just a handful of grapes. I also have got a big box of lychees, which is not something very usual. Somehow I chose the well known grapes over the less known lychees. Your friend's "anti-enjoyment" theory might be right. Sure enjoyment wins over possible enjoyment.
I have never done a preplanned fasting but I am so happy to notice that if food is not around for whatever reason, be it bad planing or sleeping late, I do not panick as on my sugar burning days, now I can skip a meal easily. Sometimes I eat traditional 3 meals a day, sometimes I push lunch so far into afternoon, that it becomes dinner.

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"The rain belt reaches roughly as far north as the Tropic of Cancer and as far south as the Tropic of Capricorn. Near these latitudes, there is one wet season and one dry season annually. On the equator, there are two wet and two dry seasons as the rain belt passes over twice a year, once moving north and once moving south. Between the tropics and the equator, locations may experience a short wet and a long wet season."

So between the tropics, the wet vs. dry phenomenon is pretty universal. It might be slightly different lengths for different areas, but they ALL have it.

Sorry, I should have clarified this. This was in response to the statement that fruit couldn't be available all year long raised by bloodorchid. Fruits do not need constant wet season. The climate on the equator is much different than just typical sub-tropical wet/dry season. Calling it dry season does not exclude availabilty of fruits. I am only talking about equatorial parts of the world.

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Sorry, I should have clarified this. This was in response to the statement that fruit couldn't be available all year long raised by bloodorchid. Fruits do not need constant wet season. The climate on the equator is much different than just typical sub-tropical wet/dry season. Calling it dry season does not exclude availabilty of fruits. I am only talking about equatorial parts of the world.

And as I pointed out, even if the plants were still able to grow, flooding/other weather events that happen due to climactic or seasonal weather changes make collecting them extremely difficult. This changes their diets because the native know that even if they can still gain access to the foods, they will prefer the foods that are easiest to get access to (such as fish when it floods) rather than go out of their way to search for foods that take great journeys and expeditions to locate during certain seasons.

Grok was smart enough to prefer what was readily available to him or her. Even if they could get access to other foods, they wouldn't have bothered if the reward vs. effort was too small. This alone can cause seasonal dietary changes.

"The cling and a clang is the metal in my head when I walk. I hear a sort of, this tinging noise - cling clang. The cling clang. So many things happen while walking. The metal in my head clangs and clings as I walk - freaks my balance out. So the natural thought is just clogged up. Totally clogged up. So we need to unplug these dams, and make the the natural flow... It sort of freaks me out. We need to unplug the dams. You cannot stop the natural flow of thought with a cling and a clang..."